


sense out of chaos

by lyricalprose (fairylights)



Series: 2013 Fic Advent Calendar [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 2013 Fic Advent Calendar, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-03 23:36:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairylights/pseuds/lyricalprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor has told Rose, more than once, that she ought to be celebrated <i>every</i> day. He thinks that’s a perfectly reasonable – even rather <i>romantic</i> – sentiment.</p><p>(Rose says he’s just trying to make up for forgetting their anniversary).</p>
            </blockquote>





	sense out of chaos

**Author's Note:**

> [neverwhyonlywho](http://neverwhyonlywho.tumblr.com) asked “Tentoo/Rose: three things worth celebrating.”
> 
> Fill #6 for my [2013 fic advent calendar](http://lyricalprose.tumblr.com/tagged/2013-fic-advent-calendar).

Time Lords don’t – well, _didn’t_ – really do _occasion._  
  
The observance of holidays (or birthdays, or anniversaries, or various other benchmarks that cultures use to measure and make meaning of time) is practically a universal constant, at least in the universe where the Doctor spent most of his nine-hundred-plus years of existence. He can’t exactly speak with authority on the general tendency of _this_ universe to mark time’s passage with occasion. However, if Earth is any indication, it’s something that at least two dimensions certainly have in common.  
  
With Time Lords, though – well, when your understanding of time hinges on the idea that it is relative, the concept of occasion becomes relative as well.  
Humans, though – humans are _brilliant_ with occasions. Birthdays and weddings and anniversaries and hundreds upon hundreds of religious and secular holidays, with everything celebrated slightly differently in different parts of the world. _Making sense out of chaos_ , he’d told Donna once.  
  
Christmas, for example, is a fascinatingly odd amalgamation of religious observance, secular holiday, co-opted ancient pagan tradition, and capitalist institution. It’s so _human,_ really, this strange annual ritual with its complex history and kitschy trappings. The Doctor doesn’t have any particular attachment to any of the individual elements – he isn’t religious, has often taken pride in not having a dime to his name, and didn’t grow up in any of the various human cultures that observe the holiday as a matter of course.  
  
But now, once a year, he and Rose put up a Christmas tree. They exchange presents with her family and the Doctor endures at least one night of wearing whatever hideous jumper or scarf or pair of gloves Jackie has knitted for him that year. And then, once Christmas dinner has been eaten and crackers have been pulled and the sitting room is littered with colored paper, he does not get in the TARDIS and leave.  
  
Instead, he plucks the paper crown from Rose’s head and kisses her until her face is flushed with something other than one too many glasses of wine.  
  
He’s not celebrating for any of the reasons people usually do – God or greed or tradition or habit – but he’s celebrating something, all the same.  
  
(Being human, maybe).  
  
—-  
  
The Doctor has told Rose, more than once, that she ought to be celebrated _every_ day. He thinks that’s a perfectly reasonable – even rather _romantic_ – sentiment.  
  
(Rose says he’s just trying to make up for forgetting their anniversary).  
  
They wear rings and they’ve said words, but things like anniversaries are a bit superfluous, as far as he’s concerned.  
  
After all, he knows, down to the millisecond, how long it has been since the moment he first took Rose Tyler’s hand – the first time, with a hand that was much rougher than this one, and the second time, with a hand that he doesn’t actually have anymore, and the third time, while they watched the TARDIS disappear together. He knows how many years it has been, in relative time, since they first went for chips in a dingy London cafe. He can count out how many minutes have elapsed since they sat in the apple grass on New Earth, can add up exactly how many hours it’s been since he first kissed her with these lips, can measure how many seconds have passed since he asked _how long are you going to stay with me_ and she told him _forever._  
  
 _Every day’s an anniversary of something, Rose_ , he says, and that does make her smile.  
  
—-  
  
He doesn’t have a birthday. Never has, though logically he knows that there is one particular day in the relative Gallifreyan calendar on which he first came into existence. But _birthdays_ – they’re one of those _occasions_ that weren’t considered important, back home.  
  
There is a date of birth printed on the (fake and hardly ever used) pieces of identification that Pete doctored up for him, when he first got here. November 23rd, he thinks, though he’d have to check to be certain.  
  
He doesn’t need a date to mark the passing of time, though. He can _feel_ it, in the way his hands get a little less steady every year, in the beat of the fragile single heart in his chest, in the streaks of gray in Rose’s hair and the ascending pencil marks on the wall of their kitchen, ticking off the years as his children grow up. It’s _terrifying_ , truly and properly frightening, to watch the years slip by, to know that this time _isn’t_ relative – that there are no do-overs, no resets, no rewinds.  
  
(And he doesn’t need to celebrate it, but he does).


End file.
